Yes? If I bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica and it turned out half my fellow passengers were actually part of the xyz gang and hijacked it and flew it to... I don't know... El Salvador I would be entirely correct in calling them criminal hijackers and I'd be justifiably pissed off (and scared).
If you add the eligible voters who chose not to vote (indicating they were fine with whoever wins), then it's a clear majority. If you don't vote, your vote is effectively for the winner.
not being motivated enough to vote against != support in terms of claiming a popular mandate. If I just don't care who wins, you can't say I support either candidate.
At most you could say my inaction prevented the winner from losing I guess.
It’s a first past the post election system, meaning you vote for the lesser evil. And this was Trump’s 2nd go around, where he campaigned on pardoning traitors. Anyone that didn’t vote for Harris gets lumped in with the supporters of the current administration, for all intents and purposes.
Eh. You can’t claim the non voters all implicitly support him though since they didn’t know the outcome ahead of time. I’ll agree they didn’t sufficiently oppose him ahead of the 2nd time to bother voting. But that’s far from support.
The current administration won the vote. And in fact the continuing resolutions that would fund the government have majority support in both houses of Congress, by the representatives of American citizens. But it needs 60 votes in Senate not just 50 votes. Right now most Democrat senators (all but 3) are voting against even a clean funding resolution that makes no changes to the pre shutdown status quo.
This is a gentle fiction. The GOP has the 51 votes to change this rule by lunchtime tomorrow and proceed to govern according to the mandate they claim. They may choose not to do that, as is their prerogative.
But they do not "need" 60 votes according to the Constitution, which is free online to read. One can even search for a 60-vote cloture requirement in the document and its amendments, which are in fact the real governing documents that describe how Congress is required to operate.
> This is a gentle fiction. The GOP has the 51 votes to change this rule by lunchtime tomorrow and proceed to govern according to the mandate they claim. They may choose not to do that, as is their prerogative.
You're correct, of course, but they're doing something that's exceedingly rare these days: they're thinking about the ramifications for when the shoe is on the other foot.
Which is kinda dumb, because Democrats have shown time and again that they're willing to throw the rulebook out when it suits them (but they'll cry crocodile tears when it's done to them).
It's all moot anyway; now that the election is over, and they don't need to leverage their constituents well-being for votes, Democrats have indicated a willingness to pass the bill.
> Democrats have shown time and again that they're willing to throw the rulebook out when it suits them
Notably, not for healthcare! (Older person's perspective: the pseudo-requirement for 60 votes is quite possibly why the US didn't get universal healthcare in 2010.)
Anyway, yes it is good if parties who win at the ballot box are able to enact their policies into law. The filibuster prevents this and as such is a cancer on representative government.
The GOP should be able to install armed checkpoints on every city block and eliminate the ACA, returning us to the status quo of 2009[1]. They won the most recent election, that is their prerogative. They should be bound by existing law, but beyond that there should be few checks on them realizing their wish list.
By the same token, when Democrats win, they should be able to offer a Medicare For All and universal preschool[2].
Parties that win should be able to enact their policies. Let the voters decide which policies they prefer. Which brings me back to
> they're thinking about the ramifications for when the shoe is on the other foot.
If they have conviction that their constituents will like their policies, they needn't worry. They should actively want to be able to enact their policies, so that voters can choose them again to get more of the same. What leader of conviction would intentionally neuter their own capabilities?
They're making the right move since everyone just blames orange man bad, as you see in the comments here.
The budget filibuster has been a weird rule for a while that has really just relied on the honor system that the majority party will throw a small bone to the minority to pass the budget. It was only a matter of time until people figured out it doesn't have to be a small bone.
Correct, and anyone that points out that the Democrats could pass this tomorrow are downvoted, and the conversation shifts to some other topic. It's crazy how neither side wants to give in.
Yeah, it's crazy how one side doesn't want to give in because they're unwilling to countenance a loss of healthcare for millions of Americans, while the other side doesn't want to give in because they're unwilling to give up on massive tax breaks for the wealthiest of the wealthy!
They did win the vote and once they started enacting their agenda people decided they didn’t like what they saw which led to the results last night. Trump won because people were misinformed, uninformed, or simply lied to by Trump and his machine.
yes, going straight into the mountain isn't any more pleasant even if 90% of the passengers sit in the cockpit. Which I hope stays a metaphor given the amount of air traffic controllers they just laid off.
Although if that metaphor is too rough I suppose we can also go with the inmates running the asylum
This whole topic is about politics and I am leery of steering even more in that direction, but based on recent polls, I’m not sure that the passengers currently do support the hijackers.
